General Chat Discussion

[Lucius]

Well, I am pleased to see that this topic has so far been quite civil; I'll try and endeavor to keep it that way.

I personally found general chat was a good way to connect to people across maps. While I do not think that lag has spiked up as a direct result of the removal of the chat (and people sitting together in larger groups), I must find myself saying that I favored it over Local. I don't know quite why, but that's how I felt.

Now, as for the removal of it, well, I can't say that I envied the choice that had to be made by staff, but I feel like the complete removal of it was a tad drastic.

Again, I risk sounding like a broken record, but the source code would have helped to filter and restrict General chat to a more manageable size, among other things.

Am I sad it's gone? Yes. Can I do anything about it? Obviously not, but such is life, so I don't spend much time mourning it.

Edit: removed the whole tangent I went off on in the spoiler. Felt like it didn't quite tie into the post, not to mention that I was describing flamers more than trolls as per definition of dictionary.

[Jango_Fett]

Doubt this will count as a necro since it was last posted on within the last week-


To be completely honest, the answer for why general was removed to me is complete nonsense.

As someone who's moderated websites, chatrooms, and servers/games all chats will be a hassle, but that's a fact of life. Removing it just pushes that into the remaining 'channels' and makes your workload not as spread out.

General was basically an 'OOC' chat or a 'Global' chat, and the only times it ever got out of hand to my memory was when someone spammed or some conversation spiralled into the abyss.
But, the community at least back then was capable of self-moderation and it was mostly peaceful.
If you didn't like seeing General all the time you could very well turn it off.

I say bring it back. It'd be nice to just be anywhere in the map and still talk to people instead of having to be in the main hub to find anyone.


TL;DR Trolls will exist and persist no matter what you do.
Bringing it back won't change the grand scheme of things, it'll just be another chatting channel.

[Insoholic]

Thank you for bringing up this topic, Vortex!

General had no restrictions, cool-down periods, or lexicons. In a game such as FeralHeart, such massive chat will simply not work. Our Staff have real lives, too, as well as other maps to monitor. The chat was truly a strain on the game, even if it was fun for socialization and good for advertising.

General chat was originally designed from the game's predecessor, Impressive Title, and made to handle around 20-30 users in one map at a time. Not over 300 per map.

There are only 5 staff members (at the moment) to enforce the Game Rules. Even with a userbase willing to screenshoot and report rule-breakers, there will always be rule-breakers who manage to slip through the cracks. The discussion has long been dead, and there's no good in bringing General back without any adjustment or modification.

[WolfQueen]

General had no restrictions, cool-down periods, or lexicons. In a game such as FeralHeart, such massive chat will simply not work. Our Staff have real lives, too, as well as other maps to monitor. The chat was truly a strain on the game, even if it was fun for socialization and good for advertising.

This is true for local too, not just General. Ever since General was disabled everyone gathered at one place to socialize on local (e.g. Stonebridge). It was a replacement that functioned just like general chat but at a restricted range (which I can assume was harder to manage).

General chat was originally designed from the game's predecessor, Impressive Title, and made to handle around 20-30 users in one map at a time. Not over 300 per map.

There are only 5 staff members (at the moment) to enforce the Game Rules. Even with a userbase willing to screenshoot and report rule-breakers, there will always be rule-breakers who manage to slip through the cracks. The discussion has long been dead, and there's no good in bringing General back without any adjustment or modification.

I'm gonna be honest with you. Moderating a chat isn't that hard, no matter the population of players. The FH player population is actually pretty small compared to most MMOs with a free chat. Not everyone talked via General back in the day ether, and most of the text posts were advertisements. There was a 5 member average actually socializing at a time.
I don't think General can come back unless Razmirz changes the part of the source code he owns anyways.

[Jango_Fett]

I'm gonna be honest with you. Moderating a chat isn't that hard, no matter the population of players. The FH player population is actually pretty small compared to most MMOs with a free chat. Not everyone talked via General back in the day ether, and most of the text posts were advertisements. There was a 5 member average actually socializing at a time.
I don't think General can come back unless Razmirz changes the part of the source code he owns anyways.

Precisely.

I've dealt with chatboxes that had sometimes up to 50-120+ people talking in it off and on on the daily, and it was.. Not difficult at all.
Granted, that's a chatbox and not a game.

However, moderating a game and the chat that is attached to it is just part of the duty of an administrator or a moderator.
If you can't take the heat, get out of the kitchen.

FeralHeart gets, what, less than 120 players on at peak hours daily? And roughly that on the weekends? Maybe?
Only time this would be a small issue is when it's winter or summer break, but even then... It's just being attentive. Even then, reports are sent in for a reason.

[Kuri]

120 on landing zone maps..  400-600 online but most of them appear to be on private maps.  It's true!  i went exploring and found people n the most random of old abandoned places.  No idea what they were doing there though, well, the greenscreen ones i know what they were doing.
But yeah.. 120-130 in the grounds is about the most i see.

[Hakumi]

Even with reports, the matter would've already died down and then some of the reports wouldn't be very useful unless it's to observe some of the players or the severity of it all.
Without general, the chats to be frankly honest are more easily monitored because you have that cluster of people in one location...
Unfortunately, depending on people's timezones, schedules, ( especially for moderators and such ), it can be quite troublesome at times.
Not gonna lie, General wasn't nearly as bad but that's how people hand things and this was before I ended up making a whole new account altogether, but even then, a chat doesn't have to be hard to monitor if the Mods , community did their part as a whole.
They could spread out more and maybe spend a bit of time on each map and such and that would be that.
To be honest, despite subtle changes for the game other than the update, the community has come a long way whether we want to acknowledge it or not, so monitoring a chat overall won't be as difficult. I do agree though with the statement above, the only time it might get overwhelming is during the holidays and or breaks and that's when the monitoring needs to be at it's maxed. Easier said than done, but we do have people that's willing to put in the time and effort to keep general running smoothly if it ever does return. We have some mature floofs on here that knows better and of course, we have the trolls, but that's usually what happens with any site.
I apologize in advance if this seems all over the place, my thought process is faster than my typing even if I were to reread it. Heh..